John Gray was unusual for being one of the very few repeat donors to the University, funding a university prize, bursary and Chair between 1794 and his death in 1811. While scholars have taken an interest in Gray for…
By a deed dated 14 July 1831, Andrew Bell left in trust funds and estates for educational purposes. This amounted to around £120,000, of which £50,000 was to be directed to the founding of Madras College. The secondary…
The Bell Chair of Education was established in 1876 by the trustees of Andrew Bell, including the Earl of Leven. and this endowment amounted to £4,000, which is equivalent to at least £400,000 in 2021. The trustees…
A donor to the University of St Andrews, alumnus Andrew Bell’s life began in the ‘Auld Grey Toon’, and he travelled around the world, from North America to India, being shipwrecked along the way. His employment as a…
If you take the A90 from Perth towards St Andrews, you will pass an imposing ruin perched high on a clifftop, overlooking the sheer drop to the Tay valley and road below. This is the Kinnoull Tower, linked to the…
In 1720, James Brydges, first duke of Chandos, gave £1,000 to the University of St Andrews to endow a new chair. During the early 1720s, Chandos was a director of (and investor in) the slave-trading Royal African…
Taken in isolation, the life and career of the renowned mineralogist Matthew Forster Heddle (known as ‘Forster’) could hardly appear more Scottish or Scotland-bound. Born in 1828 in Hoy to two old Orkney families,…
William Carmichael McIntosh, or M’Intosh, (1838-1931) is remembered both as a pioneer in marine zoology and for his contributions to fisheries science. [1] At St Andrews, McIntosh’s legacy stems from his time as…
The Menzies Bursary Trust was created by James Menzies (c1778-1844), via a Trust Disposition and Settlement of 1837. The trust was to fund bursaries for four students, at a rate of £50 per annum, tenable for four…
A fish-curer, merchant and sometime outlaw, James Menzies (c.1778-1844) was perhaps born on the Castle Menzies estate, Perthshire. He went into business in Glasgow, and by the later 1810s, was part-owner, with John…